Yet another major snowstorm has roared into town today, but this system is colder than the previous couple of storms, with snow to extremely low levels.

Snow has fallen to as low as about 500 metres around Ballarat in Victoria, and down to 600 metres in the small South Australian town of Hallett.

Australia’s alpine resorts are located between about 1300 and 2000 metres above sea level, and they are also receiving heavy snow today, with more than half a metre of fresh stuff predicted by the weekend.

Probably not the best day for a bike ride at the Cedarwood Apartments at Falls Creek in Victoria.Source:news.com.au

For some unknown reason, this family at the small resort of Selwyn Snowfields in NSW brought their lunch in an esky.Source:news.com.au

Seasoned snow watchers are now starting to talk in hushed tones about the 2014 season as potentially one of the greatest ever. It’s still very early. Peak depths are usually experienced in late August or early September. But the official NSW measuring station at Spencers Creek has hit 130cm - and that’s before this storm. The depth could be closer to 2 metres by the weekend.

Here’s a look at this year’s chart (so far) compared to 1981, which was the greatest season of the last 50 years. As you can see, there’s still a long way to go. But the graph is heading in the right direction.

The red line is this year. By the end of the week, it should be near the kink in the blue linehich is 1981.Source:news.com.au

Meanwhile, this week’s freezing snowy weather is being caused by an intense low pressure system centred south of Tasmania, which is directing a polar burst northwards. The system is also generating high winds, bringing severe weather warnings for South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.

Adelaide can expect damaging winds, hail and heavy rain today. The forecast was for snow as far north as the Flinders Ranges, above 800 metres, but as mentioned, it appears to be falling a little lower.

The strongest recorded wind gust overnight was 117km/h at Port Lincoln, on the state’s south coast.

Local TV stations in the area were off air last night due to storm damage.

The severe weather will extend east throughout the day affecting Victoria and New South Wales by tonight.

In Victoria today, large areas of the state will see snowfalls above 1000 metres, and by the weekend this will lower to around 500 metres, dumping snow in areas that rarely see it, including the hills around Melbourne.

Snow started to fall at lunchtime in and around Ballarat as seen in this Instagram post.

Damaging winds, hail and thunder are also forecast for most parts of Victoria.

More on the way ... Falls Creek was blanketed with a massive 130cm of snow during the two storms two weeks ago. Picture: Jason Edwards.Source:News Corp Australia

In NSW the Bureau of Meteorology, on Wednesday morning, issued a severe weather warning for damaging winds and blizzard conditions.